


Then Be Not Coy, but Use Your Time

by antimonyandthyme



Category: Tenet (2020)
Genre: M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Mutual Pining, they're in LOVE your honour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29775708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antimonyandthyme/pseuds/antimonyandthyme
Summary: “Well how did you fare in those Cambridge networking events, hm?”“Poorly,” Neil grins at him. “I showed up in a lab coat and they treated me as one would a box of wasps.”(Or, the Protagonist invites Neil to share in the administrative side of things.)
Relationships: Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 46





	Then Be Not Coy, but Use Your Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cupiscent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/gifts).



_Invites_ is putting it lightly; David practically issues an order. Neil is mulish, almost sullen— _a younger Neil_ , he tries to remind himself, a Neil that does not yet belong to him. This is Neil at his most rebellious and stubborn. He’s allowed questions in exchange for his loyalty. This is their middle, this is where he needs to be patient, gentle almost, but he finds himself coming up short, too used to a version of the man he’s come to miss with agonizing ferocity.

He blows out a breath. “Look,” he says flatly. “You’ll have to get used to this. Where do you think our funding comes from? Inverted gold bars?”

“Future you should’ve sent a crate,” Neil snipes back, but meeker now that he’s detected David’s annoyance. He pushes, always pushes, and then pulls right back when David shows teeth. In that regard he’s still the same. Still so attuned to David, still so eager to please, still obedient to a fault, the same as he was until his death. 

“Sorry,” Neil relents finally, ducking his head like a chastised child. The tips of his ears are pink. “I’m not good at these things, I figure I’ll be somewhat of a liability. I never liked schmoozing. Not even in grad school, where my lab had to ride the dicks of our sponsors.”

David files his surprise away, as quickly as it comes. He hoards this morsel of information Neil unknowingly feeds him, hears _If you still care, you can hear my life story_ , and smiles despite himself. He does not say, _You become better at this than I, you become the best_ , and he does not say, _You eventually develop the capability to charm the pants of anybody you meet, including me—god, especially me._

He says instead, “Well how did you fare in those Cambridge networking events, hm?”

“Poorly,” Neil grins at him. “I showed up in a lab coat and they treated me as one would a box of wasps.”

“So you know,” David says, flicking him in the forehead, the affection bubbling up uncontained within him, “looking the part is half the deal.”

Neil glances down at his jacket, unkempt and worn, a smudge on his right sleeve from gunshot residue. It hangs on his wiry frame easily, a size too large yet somehow fitting. David refrains from touching.

_(Sunsets in Budapest and smoky mornings in Montreal and frantic plans in Berlin and first meetings in Mumbai, timestamps in which Neil lounges in this suit, loose and comfortable and faultless.)_

Neil’s plaintive. “But I like this suit.”

“You can do better,” he mutters, a bald-faced lie if he’s ever heard one. Neil doesn’t call him out on it. 

\--

Henry Poole is booked up for the next five weeks, but the Master Tailor shuttles them in anyhow. Back and forth the decades, he’s purchased enough suits in his family’s account to attain a sort of mythical status. Neil raises an eyebrow at the special treatment—then again, his eyebrows have been raised since David stepped into Saville Row, looking for all the world as if he owned the street. 

They wait in a private room at the back for his favoured cutter. David sips at the provided tea, perfectly calibrated to his tastes, while Neil stares at the dinner jackets on display. “I should be afraid of you,” he decides, tapping a finger on an unshaven cheek. 

David very carefully does not let the sting show. “Should you?”

“Yes,” Neil nods solemnly, but he doesn’t shift away, remains pressed closed with their thighs almost touching. “All this,” he gestures vaguely at the expanse of the room, perhaps indicating the ilk of those who dabble in bespoke, perhaps indicating more, “suggests a very dangerous man.”

David glances at him. Neil’s body language is relaxed, his usual slouch in his shoulders, and his mouth is quirked up. His entire being is turned toward David, like a weathervane in the wind. “Yet here you are.”

Neil’s sighing exaggeratedly just as an army of stitchers walk in with an intimidating array of fabrics to pick from. “Here I am,” he thrusts himself forward. “Have at me, then,” Neil says to the bemused crowd, arms stretched out wide as if to encompass all, but David’s certain the words are meant for his ears.

_(“Apt,” a Neil made soft from the winking lights of a sleeping city says to him, some years in the future. “This little trinket of yours.”_

_“How so?”_

_“I am a coin for you to spend,” he says with no hint of resentment or regret or shame; he says with pride and an urgency David will not acknowledge, not yet. “And you will use me,” a command, not a request, “as you see fit.”_

_David doesn’t speak for the lump in his throat, but he kisses Neil then, kisses him well and perfect and good.)_

Our British style suits, the coat maker insists, pursue form rather than fad. Neil’s answering smile has a hint of panic in it, but he accepts their poking and prodding with an air of benevolent resignation, holding still when they draw a measure over every inch of his body. David watches closely, eyes connecting every so often with Neil’s in the mirror. He provides input for the placement of the buttons—strategic, if they ever get into a scuffle wearing a suit—and pushes for the deep navy cloth that settles over Neil like second skin.

He doesn’t hide the way it pleases him to dress Neil like this, knows Neil, ever sensitive, ever clever, can read it off him as clearly as a book. By the end of the session, Neil is strung tight with something close to anticipation. He looks at David, almost pleadingly. 

“A rush order, if you please,” David says to the Master Tailor, who assures him of completion by the following week—unheard of, judging by the way the cutter’s mouth flaps open in dismay, but David can’t spare the time to wait. He ushers Neil out with a firm hand on the back, warm through the thin linen, and feels Neil’s full-body shudder in response. 

\--

They go through the schedule in excruciating detail, the all-important coming appointments with stakeholders and board members alike. It’s a simple enough setup in theory: their organization functions as a go-between for suppliers and buyers, and while the cold, hard cash they take back in commission funds the day to day running of the business, it is _who_ David chooses to connect, and _what_ he deems appropriate to distribute, that come together to support the foundation of Tenet.

_(“You provided weapons to Sator’s competition,” Neil realizes once, after a mission in Estonia with a body count as high as the adrenaline rush. In the clash, they’d slipped in and destroyed one of Sator’s turnstiles._

_“Enemy of my enemy.”_

_Neil looks at him with breathlessness. “Is there anything you haven’t accounted for,” he wonders, with an awestruck reverence that tears David to the bone._

_Losing you, David doesn’t say.)_

While he can’t hide his distaste at the thought of attending the actual meetings, Neil takes to the preparations like a fish to water. He memorizes numbers in the financial reports with frightening efficiency, and goes through the buyers’ budgets, working out possible areas in which they can leverage their position. David’s reminded of why he’d been invincible with _him_ at his side.

It’s well into the night when he pours them a drink. Neil glares at the vodka tonic David sets down in front of him as if it holds the answers to his existence. “Am I allowed no secrets, then?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Sure.” Neil takes a gulpful of liquid, swallowing noisily. The vee of his shirt leaves little to imagination. David wants to press his fingers there, trail them down to the sensitive spot where Neil’s ribcages meet, down further to the fine hairs on the dip of his belly.

“You’re staring,” Neil says softly. He hasn’t looked up from the documents strewn on the desk, but his shoulders are rigid, mouth turned down. 

“Am I.” The air in their hotel room tastes like a warning. 

“You can’t,” Neil exhales. He drops the pretense with the reports, buries his head in his hands. Naked frustration lines his body.

“Am I not allowed?” David asks, and hopes he doesn’t sound as heartbroken as he feels. 

“Not if you don’t do anything about it,” Neil snaps. “You can’t just look at someone like that and— _Christ_ , you can’t look and not do anything.”

David recognizes the look Neil speaks of. It’s the same, broken one Neil wore in the Bombay Yacht Club, the look of unfathomable adoration, of volumes trapped behind his teeth. He isn’t surprised he bears the same look now; a heaven-ordained punishment for tampering with the laws of the universe. All his agents eventually carve a space in their own timeline in which they will wear variations of this look, some more devastating than others.

“That’s not fair,” is all he can say, hoarse.

“You’re right,” Neil jerks himself back up, hands reaching clumsily for the paperwork, for some semblance of control. David watches as he smoothens his face out, peeling away all the emotion that was there before, and feels as if he’s been slapped. “That wasn’t—I’m sorry. Let’s just. Get back to work.”

\--

“Neil,” he says, and it’s the way he says it (he will never get tired of saying it this way, tongue curled around the precious syllable with too much fondness) that stops Neil fidgeting. “That is atrocious.”

“You think?” Neil huffs, tugging irritably at the tie he’s made an absolute mess of. “Come on, you know I wear scarves. And lab coats.”

“Come here.” David reaches out and undoes the sloppy knot, retying it with slow, patient strokes. They’ve been careful the past few days, painstakingly measuring the distance between each other, limiting looks and touch and longing. But Neil is suddenly still against him, breath coming out in measured exhales, as if aligning himself with David’s movements, slotting them together like an interlocking puzzle. “Nervous?”

“No.”

David looks at him.

“Maybe.”

“Don’t be.” The Windsor knot sits snug around Neil’s collar, angry burgundy against midnight blue. He can’t help smoothing his palms against the line of the jacket on Neil’s shoulders, the wool soft and enticing against his skin. Stitched within an inch of his life, the suit hugs Neil obsessively, adhering to his leanness like a glove. David pulls back, assessing; they’d cut the trousers at the waist, further elongating the impression of his legs. The low noise of approval that escapes David is involuntary. “You look. Ready.”

“Ready?” Neil’s voice is threaded with amusement, at least. “I endure all that, safety pins jabbing at me from all directions, all that fondling, Christ, there was a lot of fondling wasn’t there, measuring tape going places where it shouldn’t, and then I squeeze into this, and I’ll have you know this tie is choking the life out of me—I endure all this, and all you can give me is, _ready?_ ”

_(“Stop that,” David tells him once, after they fuck, in a godforsaken safehouse in the middle of Thimphu Valley._

_Neil had thrown open the windows, and the mountain breeze had seeped in and mingled with their scent. He stands against the sill, naked, comfortable, face turning up toward the peeking rays of the sun. The light surrounds him like a Michelangelo fresco, dusting his hair bronze, his eyes silver, his skin golden._

_“Stop what?” Neil asks, tilting his hip invitingly._

_“Looking like that,” David says lowly. His entire being aches with devotion. “It’s unnecessary. There’s no way I can fall more in love with you than I already have.”)_

“You look,” he tries again, voice rough. Neil waits expectantly, something tremulous in his gaze. David doesn’t have the words, he never does, backwards or forwards. He runs a thumb across Neil’s newly shaven cheek, smooth and unblemished. Seven years later, he’ll get a scar at his left jaw from shrapnel from an inverted bomb.

 _A younger Neil_ , he reminds himself again, but no less beautiful, no less radiant than the Neil in that hut tucked away in Bhutan—

“Fine, keep your secrets then,” Neil takes pity on him, but his disappointment is palpable. He steps back, gives David a crooked smile, a peace offering. “We’ve got a meeting to go to.”

\--

It’s a good first meeting for Neil, and by good, he means _godawful_. Just as well, lesson number one: meetings are simply a cover for prolonged, mind-numbing wars of attrition, and almost nothing of relevance happens until the last five minutes at the table. There is a Sun Tzu quote to be found in there, maybe an important idea he can condense for Neil, but David’s too busy trying to decide if he wants to jump out the window, or better yet, throw the client out the window. 

Neil is faring worse, his entire body coiled taut and angry like a serpent.

“Unacceptable,” Grigoras is thumping the table with prime megalomania-businessman-quixotic gusto. “You promised deliverables. Completed products. Not parts.”

David raises an eyebrow, steeples his fingers, cocks his head. Imposing, but he remains polite. “These _parts_ are necessary for the final stage of construction. We’re not a workshop. We’re your middleman.”

Grigoras sneers, lip pulling like a slash across his face. He looks at David as one would a stain on a boot. “A jet engine requires fuel, not fairy dust. You’d recognize that if you were anything more than a hack.”

He senses rather than sees Neil tense, every fibre poised to strike. The next words out of Grigoras’ mouth will be the safety off a gun, and Neil will be down the man’s throat like a bullet. Slowly, he reaches for Neil under the table, places a hand atop his thigh. Squeezes a warning, an order, until he feels the muscles underneath unclench. The dam holds. 

David leans forward. “And you’ll recognize that the fairy dust will get you further than anything you have in your arsenal right now, if in turn you were anything more than a man grasping at straws.”

“How dare—”

“Bring us back halfway through production,” he interrupts, “and if we haven’t delivered, we can discuss restitution. The deal doesn’t change. I’d take it, if I were you.”

Grigoras seethes, David stares back. Underneath the table, Neil’s vibrating out of his skin.

The man gives, predictably. And the contract is signed within thirty seconds. They turn to leave. 

“Perhaps next time—” Grigoras begins, and David suppresses a sigh. Always with the last words, these types. He’s fully prepared to give the blandest of parting smiles to whatever bullshit the man’s about to pull out of his ass. “—you’ll let your boy do the talking, seeing as he’s got a prettier mouth than yours. Unless all he’s good for is sucking—”

The dam breaks.

_(“I’m sending you to Toronto.”_

_Neil scowls. “It’s cold.”_

_“Aw.”_

_“You’re just getting lazy, aren’t you, you get me to do all the work now.”_

_“Have you seen this guy? He’s an ill-functioning mouthpiece. He has no—” David wrinkles his nose, “—class. You know I shouldn’t touch this negotiation with a ten-foot pole. Remember the time I—”_

_Neil snorts, but his eyes are dancing, affection and amusement alight. “Oh I remember.”)_

David rears back, and the punch he throws breaks over Grigoras’ temple like a wave. He slumps to the ground like wet sand. The squeaky slide of his body on the floor would be comical, if Neil wasn’t staring at David in shock, eyes blown wide, mouth parted. 

His knuckles take a minute to unwind. He picks up the contract. Neil follows him out, a careful distance behind. 

\--

Neil turns on him the moment the door to their room closes. Presses him up against the door, boxing him in. He brings his face closes to David’s neck, and breathes like an inverted man without oxygen. 

“Neil.” His voice wavers on the knife-edge of a chasm, one he’s looking down and deciding if he should jump. “You shouldn’t—”

“Don’t tell me what I shouldn’t do,” Neil bites out harshly. “Not after that stunt you just pulled. What was that, huh? Losing control like that?” He buries his hands in David’s shirt. “What was that?”

“I couldn’t let that slide, the way he spoke of you. As if you were anything less than my equal.”

“Why bother?” Neil looks away. “He was right.”

He frowns. “What?”

Neil lets out a chuff of air, self-deprecating and tired. “I thought my brain was going to leak out of my ears listening to that guy, he was that stupid, and still he knew. One look at me and he knew. So how could you not? In a heartbeat I would be on my knees for you.”

There’s a slight tremble in the hands holding him, and Neil’s entire body’s pulled tight with tension, telling David what the confession is costing him. Fear that David would end this, send him away, as if David ever could. Neil’s looking at him as if his next words will be the frequency that shatters the wineglass. 

“You love me at your middle,” David says hoarsely, closing his eyes briefly against the tears that threaten to spill. He wonders if this is what dooms them both. “You love me at your end.”

“You’re not from here,” Neil takes a sharp breath. A storm clouds his features; anger, disbelief, hurt. “You’re from. The future. Jesus, you son of a bitch, you knew, all along you knew I—”

“Neil, this is your beginning.” David pleads. “It’s yours, and I didn’t want to dictate anything, even knowing what I knew. I wanted you to have—”

“Free will?” Neil eyes widen like he understands. He tilts his head, considering. “You wanted to give me a choice.”

“Something like that, yes,” David bows his head. 

“Then you know I already made it,” Neil says, a hint of a smile creeping on his face. “You gotta stop thinking in linear terms, boss.”

“Smartass,” David says, defeated.

“I’ll spell it out for you if I have to, because I see it now, as clear as day. Beginning or end, there isn’t ever a space in my timeline in which I don’t—”

“I know,” David whispers, cutting him off before his heart can bleed any further. 

He leans forward and kisses Neil, swallows the surprised sound that follows, and all the hungry sounds after. He strips Neil, methodically, slowly, tie and cufflink and jacket, nudging him to the bed. He presses his lips to every inch of skin, worshipful, has Neil quivering and begging before he takes him into his mouth. And when Neil clenches and comes, body arching as he cries out for him, David drinks him down, licks and chases every drop until Neil stops shaking. 

_(“You meet me and order me a diet coke. I don’t recognize you.”_

_“Hm,” Neil says simply._

_“It will hurt.”_

_“Of course.”_

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Nothing screams circular more than apologizing for your younger self’s mistakes,” Neil grins. “I see you’ve finally stopped thinking in linear terms.”_

_“Smartass,” he sighs. “I’m not convinced any of this is worth your pain.”_

_“I’ve said it before. Beginning or end, there isn’t ever a space in my timeline in which I don’t love you. That makes it worth all.”_

_“Neil,” he breathes, adoration like sweet ambrosia on his tongue._

_“I’ll find you. And you’re gonna love it. You’ll see.”)_

**Author's Note:**

> @cupiscent You and the lovely anon were talking about TP dressing Neil up and this happened ngl I nearly went for that shaving scene it's not my fault! Thank you for all those headcanons on your blog I've had so much fun reading them ♥


End file.
